We mentioned it before; the Pentax Optio WPi is a digital camera for the average consumer looking for simplicity and convenience and not wishing a lot of setting possibilities. Still the Pentax Optio WPi has a lot more to offer than you'd think at first glance. The majority of these possibilities are based on automated operations supported by the intelligent in-camera software. Settings like aperture and shutter priority are not possible, but then again, Pentax is not aiming at these settings. In practice it is very convenient to be able to store certain settings on the memory of the camera. This stops you from having to change the settings over and over again after activating or deactivating the camera.

Pentax Optio WPi - Histogram
The 2 inch format monitor shows diverse information. Besides the standard information it's possible to view a live histogram. Personally I have my doubts about the usefulness of a certain function on a camera like the Pentax Optio WPi. Who'd use a histogram or understand a thing from the blinking areas in the image? Considering the target group expect an automatic camera that automatically checks exposure and carries it out well. You did buy an automatic camera for a reason, right? We will consider the histogram function as purely additional. The monitor doesn't show which exposure (aperture and shutter speed) is chosen by the camera, it does however indicate when there is insufficient light for taking a sharp hand-held image.

Pentax WPi camera - Shooting modes
The Pentax WPi features an extensive range of pre-set shooting functions, the shooting modes, some incredible 22! The majority of these functions are aiming at exceptional images but it proves that the Pentax has the solution for virtually any situation. The P-mode is the default setting. The well-known A, S and M modes on advanced cameras are missing. Icons appear on the monitor clearly showing the scene modes from Flowers, Sports and Children up to Soft, Firework and Panorama Assist. Naturally the Underwater mode is available. This setting makes sure the blue colour of the water is rendered as perfect as possible. A different setting is Food; this function lets you take images of the dinner you're about to eat at which the camera ensures higher colour saturation and a bright image. Will this setting be used often? Maybe if you are a professional chef. You can discuss whether such settings add something to the camera, on the other hand it doesn't interfere with the user friendliness so we just conclude that an extensive diversity of automatic setting possibilities are available offering the perfect solution for everybody.

Pentax WPi - Software & Secure Digital memory card
In addition Pentax has equipped the WPi with intelligent software specifically for in-camera image editing afterwards. Editing images in the camera is not new; other brands are also equipping their cameras with this software. The Pentax Optio WPi lets you change image size and quality and rewrite it on the memory card or internal memory of the camera. Besides that it's possible to delete part of the image and copy images and sound files from the internal memory onto the SD card. For those who'd even like to go one step further, the Pentax Optio WPi offers nine digital colour filters and a brightness filter.

For further convenience the camera features red-eye correction function. If you discover after taking the picture that red eyes occur in the picture despite of using the red eye function, this can be corrected afterwards with the red eye correction function. And to liven up the images some frames are available to place around your image. The WPi standard offers three frames, but additional frames are available as a download from the Internet. For those who'd like to get into cutting and pasting videos, this feature is also available on the WPi. However, the video resolution of the Pentax Optio WPi is somewhat mean compared to the high resolution video clips of competing brands.

Pentax Optio WPi camera - Continuous shooting
The Pentax WPi will not become the ultimate action camera for the action photographer. Although the camera is capable of continuous shooting, it is a rather limited function. The camera features two continuous shooting modes: continuous and fast continuous. The first mode will store one image at a time, so you have to wait until the image is stored before being able to shoot the next one. Considering a resolution of 6 Megapixels, this works really slow and there is no such thing as action photography. The second (fast continuous) mode uses the internal buffer. Why is this buffer not being used with the first mode too? The second setting only works with a resolution of 1280 x 960 and reaches a speed of 3 frames per second until the buffer's memory is full.

Pentax Optio WPi - White balance & ISO
There are three different ways of selecting the quality of the images. Advisable is to select the maximum quality. If a too high compression factor is chosen, you will find artifacts appearing on your subject. The default sharpening is fairly strong to begin with and the average user will certainly consider it as very sharp. Personally I prefer to lessen the sharpening a bit to decide the sharpness by means of photo editing software afterwards. Colour rendering of the images is true-to-nature with pleasant colour saturation. The auto white balance functions fine, only in circumstances with overall artificial light it fails at times. But that's only a matter of selecting the correct white balance and the image will turn out a lot more neutral. ISO settings can be selected manually. There is a choice from 80 ISO up to 400 ISO. The WPi even offers 800 ISO but this value is only set at one particular scene mode; Candlelight. Low ISO values up until 200 ISO look fine to even perfect; higher ISO values show increasing noise. Rather common for a type of camera like the Pentax WPi, but to be honest, it ought to be possible to obtain better results.